Microsoft has reason to rejoice with a new report by Nielsen showing that Bing has become the #2 search engine in the US, pipping Yahoo! on its way. The report has indicated that Bing has gained a market share of 13.9% currently in the US, which is a relative increase of 30% from the same time last year. As Bing as increased in popularity, Yahoo! has slowly faded away. But then again was Yahoo! really ever going to keep Bing behind?
Ever since its launch, Bing has really eaten up Yahoo!’s, and in some sense, Google’s market share. However, it is to be noted that Yahoo always did want to get out of the search engine business since quite some time. Maybe Yahoo! realized how it would take a mammoth effort to dethrone Google from the top spot. Yahoo! had even decided to partner with Microsoft to use the latter’s search technology in 2009, but only recently started implementing the technology. Through this merger, even if you consider Bing and Yahoo! to be a single entity, they still account for only a little over 26% of the market share.
Will Google always take top honors?
The answer to this question is kind of unanimous all across the globe. How will anyone ever bring the search giants down? With their technology, and more recently with the launch of Google Instant, even coming close to Google looks like a distant dream for Microsoft and Yahoo!, or the two combined. Unless one of the competitors can come up with a radical idea to revolutionize the search industry, Google will continue its reign. If a startup were to come up with a new technology, Google will just show off its muscle and buy the startup and own the patented technology.
Coming in second only to Google is great news as far as Bing is concerned. However, from Yahoo!’s point of view, this can only be looked at as another nail in Yahoo!’s search engine coffin. What is your take on this? How do you think Bing will fair in India?
